The electoral victory of Evo Morales in the last elections is
a political phenomenon that one could see coming, but the final results notably
surpassed the predictions and polls that said that the candidate of the Movement
Towards Socialism (MAS) would obtain 38% of the electorate.

This victory is part of the democratic, progressive and
left-wing current that is taking shape in the Latin American countries, shown in
various electoral processes and in the development of the struggle of the
workers and peoples fighting for change; it is the answer to three decades of
structural adjustment policies imposed by the International Monetary Fund and by
governments submissive to U.S. policies that have notably affected the
conditions of life of the Bolivians.

Morales knows how to concentrate popular feeling and he has
raised a political proposal that contradicts the one defined by the United
States for the region. He proposes to defend national sovereignty, to oppose
endorsing the Free Trade Agreement and the presence of Yankee military bases in
the continent, he promises to nationalise the oil and gas resources; he demands
the political and material rights of the indigenous peoples and of the working
classes; this has led him to gain the support of a people that is mobilised, as
has been shown in these last years through the popular uprisings that have put
an end to two anti-popular and pro-imperialist governments.

Morales has not only won due to the support of the indigenous
peoples (Aymaras, Kichwas, Guaranis and others), but due to the support of
sectors of the workers, miners, peasants, small traders, youths and unemployed
who voted against neo-liberalism and for social change. Now he has a great
commitment and an enormous responsibility towards a people that expects the new
government to attend to their needs disregarded for years. Some social sectors
(such as those organized in the Bolivian Trade Union Federation, COB) have set a
time limit for Morales to meet certain demands and apply determined political
measures. The level of mobilisation of the masses will be a determining factor
for the political programme to be applied. But Evo Morales will also face a
series of boycott actions from inside and outside the country promoted by U.S.
imperialism and the pro-imperialist bourgeoisie. Certainly the oligarchy from
Santa Cruz and that of other regions will persist in their plans for autonomy to
break up Bolivia; and the demand to legalise the cultivation of coca will be
taken as a pretext to call that country of the high plateau an emporium for drug
trafficking, to justify interventionist actions.

We revolutionaries look with sympathy on this political
victory gained by the workers and peoples of Bolivia, which is also a harsh blow
to imperialism and the local bourgeoisie. The Bolivian people and their new
government count on our solidarity and support in all those measures directed at
striking a blow against the privileges of the ruling classes and at foreign
domination; in all those actions that demand the sovereign right of that people
to live with liberty and in equity.

Some facts about Bolivian reality

The last two decades of the application of neo-liberal
policies in Bolivia have meant that, in the countryside, the number of wage
workers has diminished from 73 thousand to 64 thousand. The number of households
that work for themselves – basically with subsistence economies – went from 43
thousand to 447 thousand. In the cities, the so-called informal sector, composed
of household units, artisans, based on family labour and not wage labour, grew
from the 60% to 68% of the total working population. Thus, the number of people
with work contracts fell from 40% to 32% of the total labour force.

Bolivia has very bad indices of income distribution, only
exceeded – negatively – by Brazil. The richest 20% dispose of an income 30 times
greater that the poorest 20%. Sixty percent of the population lives in poverty
in the whole country, but that index reaches 90% in the rural areas. Official
unemployment figures trebled in the last 17 years, since the monetary
stabilisation plans began to be applied, reaching 13.9%, while the proportion of
persons in the ‘informal’ sector – that is, those with precarious jobs – grew
from 58% to 68% in 15 years. Infant mortality is 60 for every thousand live
births, while the average for the continent is 28. Life expectancy at birth is
63 years, while the average for Latin America and the Caribbean is 70 years.

Two and a half million peasants have as their main instrument
of labour the Egyptian plough, which is 3,000 years old. Modern technology is
only utilised in the extraction of oil and gas, in telecommunications, the banks
and in 10% of mining extraction and industrial production.

Editorial Board of En Marcha, Central Organ of the
Marxist Leninist Communist Party of Ecuador (PCMLE) December 21, 2005